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Another one of the children of Henry and Catherine GASSON (my 4x great-grandparents) is causing me some problems.

Eleanor Ann Judith GASSON was their last child, baptised in Nuthurst, Sussex on the 9th January 1839. There is a birth registration in the GRO indexes in Q4 1838 in Horsham Registration District which would seem like a good match, however the name is simply registered as Female.

This is probably the correct birth registration but I can’t be 100% certain, not that it is really that important to my research. It might provide an address for Henry and Catherine, but apart from that I don’t think there is anything else useful that could be learnt from ordering the actual birth certificate.

In the 1841 census Eleanor Ann Judith is living with her parents at New House in Nuthurst, she is aged two years and her name is recorded as Judith. In 1851 she is still with her parents, now aged 13 years and recorded as a scholar. In 1851 her name is record as Elleanor A J GASSON.

Unfortunately that is where the trail ends.

I can find no marriage or death registration that seems to fit and my best efforts have failed to find any trace of Eleanor in any census from 1861 to 1911. I have tried many combinations of the variations of Eleanor’s names and the surname GASSON, but I have still found nothing that seems to fit.

So what became of Eleanor Ann Judith GASSON?

I don’t want to spend too much time working on finding her, but now I have found a little challenge which has me hooked. The problem of course is that there are many possible forenames that Eleanor could have been recorded under and many variations of spellings. If I am going to find her then I need to be methodical and record all the places I have looked and all the name variations I have checked.

I don’t think ordering her birth certificate is going to help, I just need to be a bit smarter with my searching.

John this is such a common problem. I guess you would have to figure that if she died, you would be finding that. So marriage in another location is the more likely choice. Please if you have any further success I’d like to hear how you achieved it. thanks and good luck!!! Diane